Iran appears to be using executions “as a tool of state intimidation”, the United Nations said yesterday, as it denounced a jump in capital punishment globally in 2025.

Russia launched a barrage of drone strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure overnight yesterday, cutting off power in five regions across the country amid freezing temperatures and high demand, Ukrainian officials said.

The blaze started late on Saturday

Reportedly executed 1,500 people last year, said UN rights chief

Trump's Greenland push strains NATO and EU-US trade relations

Police said the driver of the minibus appeared to have lost control while attempting to overtake other vehicles

Moscow is studying the proposal and hopes for contacts with Washington concerning it

The quake was at a depth of 35 km

It marks the lowest birth rate since records by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) began in 1949

Vietnam's ruling Communist Party convened Monday to begin their twice-a-decade congress, where leader To Lam is looking to tighten his grip on power less than two years after assuming the top role

Guatemala's president on Sunday declared a 30-day nationwide state of emergency to combat criminal gangs after authorities accused the groups of killing eight police officers and holding hostages at three prisons

It was the deadliest train accident since 2013, when 80 people died

At least 5,000 people have been killed in protests in Iran, including about 500 security personnel, an Iranian official in the region said yesterday, citing verified figures and accusing “terrorists and armed rioters” of killing “innocent Iranians”.

Firefighters in Pakistan’s largest city were fighting to extinguish a massive blaze yesterday that has killed six people and reduced parts of a shopping mall to rubble in Karachi’s historic downtown.

Indonesian authorities said yesterday they had located the wreckage of a fisheries surveillance plane that went missing in South Sulawesi province on the slope of a fog-covered mountain and had recovered the body of one of the 10 people on board.

Two people were killed and dozens more wounded in a mass Russian drone attack across Ukraine overnight, President Volodymyr Zelensky said yesterday, as US and Ukrainian negotiators hashed out a post-war plan in the latest round of peace talks.

Syrian troops fighting US-backed Kurdish-led forces seized the Omar oil field, the country’s largest, and the Conoco gas field in the eastern Deir Zor province as allied Arab tribal forces advanced in the oil-rich area along the border with Iraq, officials and security sources said yesterday.

A draft charter sent to about 60 countries by the US administration calls for members to contribute $1 billion in cash if they want their membership to last more than three years, according to the document seen by Reuters.

Portuguese voters queued at polling stations yesterday to elect a new president, with opinion surveys showing three candidates, including the leader of the far-right Cheap party, nearly tied for a spot in a likely top-two runoff.

Eight European nations in a joint statement yesterday said they stood in solidarity with the Kingdom of Denmark and the people of Greenland following US President Donald Trump’s threat to annex the Arctic island.